Childhood Obesity and Cartoons

There be much obese children in the current times than ever before, and many an(prenominal) people blame many different sources. One of these sources is Television whether it is the act of the children watching television receiver, or the verbalizes themselves and what the children atomic number 18 seeing on the programs. The primary(prenominal) discussion in what childrens television programs atomic number 18 demonstrate is food more than specifically, blebby food. many an(prenominal) of the programs on the childrens television channels show many cases of food during their run-time, and many argue that the mass of this food is unhealthy, and part of the cause of our childrens obesity.One of the more current cases in this category baffling the long-time popular young childrens show Sesame Street, in which the beloved Cookie Monster was changed. He was changed to eat takingss and vegetables with the occasional cookie because always eating cookies was unhealthy, and many complained that their children were getting a bad typesetters case from this. This was an extreme case since the show was actually changed (since it was such a popular show for young kids) where in most shows, people wouldnt argue as much, nor would they bother to change.A lot of studies have been through regarding the relation between obesity in children and childrens television, however mostly the studies were just making a correlation between the number of hours of television viewed and child obesity. The studies were non all paying attention to the get hold of programs or channels watched, just the fact that it was television. In his essay Healthy Cartoons? A Content depth psychology of Foods in Childrens Animated Television Programs, Jeremy L. Korr talks about food in childrens television programming.Not only does he look back and gather together a lot of the grand studies d star concerning Childrens television programs and the food shown or compose, but he does his own studies of the current Childrens Cartoons and their food shown and referenced (which volition be discussed later). There are some older studies of childrens programs, adept of which was conducted in 1994 by Warnke and Albrecht. They analyzed many childrens ne dickensrk programs airing Saturday mornings broadcast during 1991 and 1992.Of the foods mentioned or shown in these shows, 32 per centum were ingatherings and vegetables, 14 percent were sweets (Korr 452), and the rest were other food-types. This already helps to show that childrens programs do not show only unhealthy or even mostly unhealthy foods. However, a more recent study conducted by Poor in 2007 showed some different results. After watching 20 hours of the Disney Channels programming, Poor found that 57 percent of the foods referenced within the Disney Channel programs were pitiful in nutritional value (Korr 452).These two studies reckon to contradict each other, however the study through with(p) by Warnke a nd Albrecht was through on Saturday morning programming on major networks, where children (and parents) will be more in all probability to be watching the programs, whereas the study done by Poor was not. So the study done by Warnke and Albrecht could almost (but not) be disregarded, since the programs will intentionally try to be healthier since there will be more attention (by parents etc. ) on Saturday morning programming.In summary, these studies do not seem to show that childrens television programs are all showing only unhealthy food. The Saturday morning childrens programs on the major channels tend to stick more with healthier foods, but the weekday childrens programs on channels such as the Disney Channel tend to be closer to half or more of the food shown being unhealthy. Neither of these seem to quite prove or disprove that childrens programs are leading to obesity. Of course, in watching television, not only is one watching the program, but sitting through the commercia ls.People tend to neglect this fact and stick to blaming the childrens television programs instead of looking towards the childrens commercials. These commercials have been proven to consist of almost all unhealthy foods (at least in the past before long they are moving more towards healthier foods because of the overall scare of childrens obesity in our society). A semi-current study was taken by Powel in 2007 that showed 98 percent of the food commercials view by children recovered 2 to 11 and 89 percent of those viewed by children aged 12 to 17 were for products high in fat, sugar, or sodium (Korr 451).These numbers have most likely lowered in the past a couple of(prenominal) years due to all the current attempts to help our ever-growing obese society, but never the less this is smooth quite important. Another relatively recent study on childrens commercials was conducted by the Kaiser Family Foundation in 2007. After studying thousands of childrens food advertisements, the y found that 34 percent of the foods in those ads were for candy and snacks, 28 percent were for cereal, 10 percent were for fast food, 4 percent were for dairy products, 1 percent were for fruit juices, and none were for fruits or vegetables (Korr 458).Although it is not split into simply unhealthy and healthy categories, one can intimately agree that well over half, maybe two-thirds of the advertisements were of unhealthy foods. This only helps strengthen that a good mass of advertisements during childrens programming are of unhealthy foods. Now that childrens programming and the advertisements during have been covered, only one category remains Childrens Cartoons. Since it is a relatively hard subject to study, since cartoons arent always realistic, not much research has been done.Korr however, watched thirty-two childrens cartoons on a total of three cable and two broadcast networks. He found that 35 percent of the foods referenced visually or verbally were sweets and stimula ting snacks, 6 percent were breads and cereals, 18 percent were meats, 5 percent were dairy products, and 22 percent were fruits and vegetables (including fruit juice) (Korr 458). So as far as Childrens Cartoons surprisingly, one-fifth to one-fourth of all of the foods referenced are fruits and vegetables, and less than one-half of all of the foods referenced are unhealthy.This differs slightly from lifeless childrens programs with more fruits and vegetables and 20-25 percent less unhealthy foods. Compared to the more closely monitored Saturday childrens programs, which consist of unanimated and animated shows, there are considerably more sweets and slightly less vegetables overall in childrens cartoons. Korr also found that childrens Cable channels accounted for most of the food references as well as 98 percent of the references to sweets, 91 percent of the references to zesty snacks, and 91 percent of the references to fruits and vegetables (Korr 459).He also found the lowest fr equency of unhealthy foods in the Saturday morning programs that were always ridiculed for sending out poor nutritional messages. This only helps prove the particular that Saturday morning programs are more closely monitored seeing as they have the least reference to food, as well as the least reference to unhealthy food. So now, we could almost definitively say that warnke and Albrechts studies could be ignored for the purpose of this analysis. After looking at all of these different studies, one can guess a few things.First, childrens programs aired on cable seem to be more likely to have more foods referenced or shown, which of course leads to more unhealthy foods. Second, childrens programs aired on Saturdays seem to be more likely to have less foods referenced or shown, with more fruits and vegetables than sweets and salty foods. Third, childrens programs aired on the weekdays tend to have more sweets involved. And last, childrens advertisements all seem to show a majority of unhealthy foods.In general, it seems that childrens advertisements are the major problem in showing unhealthy foods. As far as childrens programming, Cartoons seem to show more unhealthy foods than unanimated series, and depending on what time and network the program is aired on will make a discrepancy on what one will see. One solution to this, stated by Korr, would be to use a DVR (digital video recorder), such as TiVo, to record the programs, and then fast-forward or skip through the commercials, thereby eliminating a good centre of the unhealthy foods shown during childrens programming.However this does not seem quite necessary. It seems, based on these studies, that if one limits them self to Saturday programming, one will eliminate a good amount of the advertisements and the shows with unhealthy foods referenced and shown. Also watching broadcast as opposed to cable network shows appears to cut down the amount as well. As a last resort, if a child must watch television, a D VR would be a relatively good solution.